Ru kiln, Pinyin Ru yao, or Wade-Giles Ju yao, kiln known for creating highly prized Chinese stoneware. The Ru kiln produced ware for a short period during the years when Northern Song emperors Zhezong (1085–1110) and Huizong (1110–1125) ruled.

No more than 60 intact pieces from the kiln were known before the discovery in 1986 of the original kiln site, which is in the village of Qingliangsi, in Baofeng county, Henan province. This site has yielded at least 37 more examples (22 of which are intact). The undecorated bluish or greenish gray glaze of Ru wares was cloudy and opaque, often with a slight lavender tinge and a fine, irregular network of cracks. The glaze typically covered a gray stoneware body that had a simple, elegant shape.

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objects made of clay and hardened by heat: earthenware, stoneware, and porcelain, particularly those made in China. Nowhere in the world has pottery assumed such importance as in China, and the influence of Chinese porcelain on later European pottery has been profound.

Ru ware has a buff stoneware body and is covered with a dense greenish-blue glaze that sometimes has a fine crackle. It was made in Henan at an imperial factory that was apparently in production for about 20 years, starting in 1107.

...from the northern whitewares of the Tang dynasty. Supposedly because of Huizong’s dissatisfaction with Ding ware, it was replaced in the late Northern Song by another official ware known as Ru, the rarest and most highly prized of all Chinese ceramics (until the mid-1980s, only some 60 examples were known). Representing Huizong’s celebrated aestheticism, the low-fired Ru stoneware is...